1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to the manipulation of financial information and, more particularly, to a system and method for direct manipulation of a triangular distribution of information using a graphical user interface.
2. Description of the Related Art
Estimating financial data such as the cost of a project or the expected revenue of that project, even when well informed, is a difficult process with a high degree of error. A method of capturing triangular distributions around such estimates allows for the specification of not only one estimate for a given data point, but an upper and lower bound on that estimate. This allows for a specification of the uncertainty of the given estimate. Unfortunately, this involves entering three separate estimates for any given data point.
Typically these data points are input into a spreadsheet or database to be used in various calculations or simulations. Entering these numbers by hand is tedious and error-prone. For most simulations, a continuous set of data is desired, for example, for every quarter over a given time period (e.g., a five year period). In this example, three estimates for each quarter over a five year period would require entering sixty values by hand. Those sixty values only correspond to one variable. Moreover, adjusting these estimates, once entered, can be a very cumbersome task.